If not us, who?

The NYT has a review of a book (so does the Washington Times) that should help students understand how the Republican Party became such an effective vehicle for the modern conservative movement. It was once a much more staid, establishment oriented party.

If not us, who? is subtitled: William Rusher, National Review and the Conservative Movement. It details the people and events that rallied behind Barry Goldwater's candidacy first in 1960, and then 1964, and would eventually promote Ronald Reagan's successful run for the White House. in so doing it would reshape and redefine the Republican Party.

For me the most interesting aspect of this story is the effort of Rusher to reorient the conservative movement from one that focused principally on elites, to one that had a populist flavor. Rusher apparently played a huge role in developing the Southern Strategy, which peeled poor southern whites away from their century and a half allegiance to the Democratic Party towards the party of Lincoln, Hoover and Wall Street. Prior to this the Republican Party did not care to connect to the "people" and was apologetically elitist. It promoted the interests of business classes, it did not promote an ideological agenda.

No mean feat. The consequences of their effort defines politics today.

- Wikipedia: William Rusher.
- Wikipedia: National Review.
- Wikipedia: Movement Conservatism. 

Winning by Losing

When covering elections, we generally argue that the presidential elections of 1964 and 1972 were catastrophic failures for, respectively, the Republicans and the Democrats. After all, each party's fringe nominated candidates that were not accepted by the electorate's moderates.

But David Broder reminds us that each candidate represented a wing within the party that was growing in strength and eventually allowed the party to dominate a series of elections. The Goldwater Republicans later fixated on Reagan. Now, he suggests, the wing that brought you George McGovern--who pushed to expand the party to aggressively include women and minorities--is deciding between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, two products of that inclusion.

He suggests that the effort to find strategic politicians that scrape through with narrow victories do not leave lasting legacies.